Often when a highly skilled and experienced employee leaves one company to work for another, there is the potential for a transfer of sensitive information between competitors. Two basic principles in such cases appear irreconcilable: the right of the company to its intellectual property—its proprietary data and trade secrets—and the right of free employment decisions. But it is also doubtful that they are effective in preserving trade secrets.
It is obviously impossible to divest oneself of that part of one's expertise that one has acquired from former employers and coworkers. Nor, in general, can one selectively refrain from its use, given that it has become an integral part of one's total intellectual capacity. Nevertheless, almost any such information that is data, including inventions, generated by the employee in connection with the company's business.
Once an employee takes a position with a competitor, the trade secrets that have been acquired by that employee may manifest themselves clearly and consciously. This is what court injunctions seek to prohibit. But they are far more likely to manifest themselves subconsciously and inconspicuously—for example, in one's daily decisions at the transfer of information except for the passage of documents and other concrete embodiments of the secrets.
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